NOTE: Please read the AN at the bottom of the chapter! You can ignore it any other time though.

Percy POV

It was the last day of term and I was stuffing all my stuff in my suitcases, thinking about how awesome it was going to be to be home again with Ralen and Esmond and our parents and Melody's amazing food. Then again, I'll be more vulnerable to pranks now that Melody wouldn't be focusing her efforts on Nancy and Sabrina, so maybe it wont be such a great thing but we'll see. I'm all ready to head out but first, Melody, Sabrina and I have a little surprise for Nancy. My job is just to distract her long enough for Sabrina and Melody to do a few things such as place in an exploding slime bomb for when she next opens it, and something they didn't tell me about but is apparently worse than a slime bomb. Here's to hoping they only thought to make one. I grabbed my stuff and headed out into the hallway. All the other guys were talking about their vacation plans. Most of them were going off to some far away, expensive, hard to get to places that they'd have to take planes to. Suckers, they have to pay to fly and don't even get the experience of the wind through their hair and feeling your wings work in a powerful tandem. Flying through clouds is pretty fun too, Esmond had gotten his wings just before Melody and I had to go to school and the whole family played hide and seek in the sky. All of us descended from the water colony can stand on clouds but they are only solid and hod our weight if we want them to.

I made it to the girls level to meet up with Melody and Sabrina in their room. I only had a backpack as Mom and Dad had come by yesterday and put everything else in the car and took it home. They did the same for Melody so we could celebrate our last day then fly home when we were done. I made it to Melody's dorm and went in to find Sabrina and Nancy in a heated argument.

"You're calling ME stupid?! I'll have you know I got recommendations for honors classes next year! Don't think I didn't see that report card, you had straight Fs! I don't even think they'll let you back here because clearly your too stupid to be a human and are actually an anthropomorphic animal! Probably a pig considering how much you eat! I must say though, its pretty impressive you hadn't been found out before now." Sabrina rebutted to whatever Nancy said to her before I came in. Nancy seemed to be frozen trying to understand what Sabrina had said. I snickered at her dumbfounded expression and both girls noticed my presence and smiled. Sabrina was smirking slyly at Nancy then saluted me and ran into Melody's room. Nancy didn't notice, now having me to pick on instead, likely with more success because my vocabulary was smaller. However, if it got physical I was NOT holding back this time.

"You know," I said, "Maybe if you spent more time actually paying attention in class instead of picking on everyone around you, you might actually be able to stand up for yourself verbally." She narrowed her eyes but smirked.

"Ya, but making other people squirm is MUCH more fun than those boring pieces of paper and teachers. Now your gonna get it for real now that no one can stop me and you have nowhere to go." She threatened. It wasn't a very good one considering I COULD in fact just turn around open the door and leave but at that moment Melody and Sabrina emerged and gave me a thumbs up before slipping into Nancy's room. I only had to keep her distracted until they came out. I circled in the opposite direction of Nancy's door slowly.

This went on for a bit in the same manner for a few minutes until Nancy got fed up trying to argue and just charged me. It was like a bull. I waited till the last second and then leaped out of the way and Nancy rammed into the corner of the room and actually managed to knock herself out. Made my job easier. Melody and Sabrina emerged about 30 seconds later giggling and saw Nancy passed out on the floor and me still frozen in shock.

"What." Melody began. "Happened." Finished Sabrina and I explained what had happened and they burst into laughter. "So I was wrong about her being a pig, she's a cow!" Sabrina exclaimed through her laughter. Sabrina then excused herself to go back to the packing she had been doing before Nancy picked a fight with her.

"Hey Melody, what was the other thing you guys did to her stuff?" I asked.

"Oooh, just something I thought she could remember us by and rue the day she messed with us." She deflected and I knew I wasn't going to get anything else out of her. The last day of school was pretty much as soon as you were packed and ready to go you could leave so Melody said good-bye to Sabrina and we left campus. I had already said my farewell to Grover but we ran into him as we were leaving the school building.

"H-Hey M-Melody and Perce. Where you guys heading, didn't your parents already get all your stuff yesterday?" My sister terrified the poor guy and for good reason too. Ever since we figured out he knew Melody had been much more hostile towards him but today I think she was still riding on the elation of revenge on Nancy so she didn't comment and increased her pace so we could talk in peace.

"Well," I said, "We we're just going to take the train into Manhatten to visit someone then just walk around a bit, get something to eat and head home." I told him.

"Oh, cool. Mind if I accompany you guys? I'm going into town as well." He asked. I was about to ask Melody, but she had clearly been listening in when she said, "Okay, but just know that you could be ditched at any time." "She's cool with it so I guess your good." I told him. He didn't seem reassured. We got on the train and Grover was acting really nervous. I'd always thought he'd just been nervous of Nancy coming to bully us but Nancy couldn't get him here even if she wanted to as the Greyhound had already got on the way. I wondered if it was something else but frankly I was too preoccupied thinking about where we were going to dwell on it. Neither Grover nor Melody knew the first place I wanted to go, though I think Melody suspected the destination. We got off at our stop with no issues and started walking, chatting idly. As we neared the destination, out of the corner of my eye I saw Melody tap Grover's shoulder and they both stopped. I was grateful. I opened the low, metal, fence gate and wandered around a bit until I found it.

"Hey Mom,"I said, "I just finished my first year of actual school today. I think you'd be proud but I don't really remember you much anymore. I'm still pretty happy with where I am and I made some new friends. Well, only one really but he's a pretty good friend. I think you'd have liked him. I-I'll visit you again sometime, bye Mom." My eyes were a little watery which is why I didn't at first notice the three old ladies knitting what looked to be the largest sock I'd ever seen. They were the size of sweaters and while I've seen some pretty bad knitting *CoughMelodycough* this was clearly intentional. Another thing that seemed intentional was that all three of them were staring straight at me. Just then, without looking away, the middle one took out a large pair of gold and silver scissors and snipped the yarn. It was suddenly dead quiet and I couldn't hear anything but the shink of the scissors going through the yarn. The two others balled up the yarn and when I blinked, they were gone. I wondered if I had just imagined the whole thing but when I got back to Grover and Melody they were both staring at where the old ladies had been as well.

"Percy," Grover said, "Tell me those old ladies were NOT looking at you." I took a quick scan of the graveyard before replying.

"There wasn't anyone else but yeah they were." I told him. He suddenly went white as a sheet. "Grover," I asked, "Is everything okay? Do you need to lay down or something?" Grover just closed his eyes and made a motion with his hands like warding off evil but it seemed... older somehow. Then he started mumbling. I only caught some of it.

"Not again...last time...sixth...always sixth..." He was going to go on before Melody interjected.

"What, on the planet earth is going on?" She asked, "What was with the disappearing old ladies, whats the big deal and what are you mumbling about? What "last time" and whats "always sixth". I want answers!" I couldn't help but agree with her. Grover seemed to snap out of whatever he was doing and embarrassed color flooded his face.

"N-Nothing! Nothing. I'm just...hungry! Ya, hungry. You said you guys were going to go somewhere?" He still seemed pretty off but it was likely the summer heat that was rolling in. Melody was looking at him strangely but replied, "Yes, we were. Does IHOP sound good? I'm in the mood for pancakes and these guys make the only ones better than mine."

"Sure" I said. Grover just nodded his head and we began walking back to the Greyhound terminal. On the way Grover seemed to have a relapse back into whatever he had been doing back at the graveyard but kept pace. I could see in my peripheral vision that he kept looking my direction. We had taken a slightly different route back and we walked by a flower stand. Melody loves flowers so she stopped to look at them all and smell them. I personally couldn't get too close or I got a headache from all the different, bold smells. At this point Grover had started to shake and before I could ask him if he was sure he was okay he said, "Percy, promise me you'll let me accompany you guys home." He seemed dead serious. Honestly I was beginning to be really freaked out and just to ease his nerves I told him. "Umm, okay. Do you want something to drink?" But before he could answer Melody was done and began dragging us towards the terminal again. But before we left Grover had this mournful look at the flowers as though he was picking ones I'd like best.


AN: Hey there! I had such a hard time writing this I actually scrapped what I had written because I wasn't happy with it and frankly I had just confused myself. I suck at transitions, ask my last english teacher. It made zero sense in terms of where I'm planning on taking this and I started to over complicate so I guess I'm settling with this simpler version. Sorry its late. On a better note though, in between boughts of writers block I had a few random unrelated ideas but I couldn't fit them into this time line chronologically, so I made another one! Sort of. I've published another little book on the adventures of Percy and Melody if you check that out on my profile, more details there! Go! Do it!